Hemisphere threw the gunship into evasive turns and rolls. Koorland raked the ground below with the turret’s heavy bolters, and energy bolts lashed the grey late afternoon. A lightning storm reached up from the ground to surround the Storm Eagle. The orks had assembled a battery of energy cannons, and they had waited until Hemisphere had flown within the ring of cannons before opening fire.
Hemisphere vectored the thrusters downwards. The engines shrieked with strain as the gunship shot up and banked south. A crackling beam punched a hole through the centre of the port wing and the engine stuttered. Speed bled away and the gunship dropped. Hemisphere released the wing-mounted stormstrike missiles before the ork fire could blow them up.
The gunship spiralled downwards. Koorland saw the ragged jungle canopy rush towards them, spitting ordnance. His bolter fire felt like nothing more than symbolic defiance.
Hemisphere regained control of the Deathblow. The gunship levelled off and skimmed just above the trees, brushing them. A gale of leaves and broken branches surrounded it. The orks lowered their fire, but the ship had dropped faster than they could adjust their aim. Hemisphere stayed low, strafing the ground ahead with the twin-linked assault cannon. Koorland turned his guns the same way. They unleashed an annihilating barrage ahead of them. At this speed, at this proximity, the land and the ork army were a blur. There was no chance to aim. Koorland had a brief glimpse of artillery guns ahead, and then they blew up. The Deathblow streaked into a wall of burning plasma.
Then they were through the anti-aircraft ring. Hemisphere angled the ship up again, putting distance between it and the orks. Energy beams arced after them. A rocket screamed by the turret canopy and exploded just off the port wing. The blast wave buffeted the Storm Eagle. The engine stalled again, but Hemisphere kept control of the flight. He dipped the nose, sacrificing altitude for speed, then angled hard to port, and the ork fire went off to the side.
‘I’m satisfied we’ve found our target,’ Hemisphere said.
‘So am I.’ These orks were not marching or searching. They were at war. They had an enemy. Koorland opened a vox-channel to Thane. ‘We have our target. I’m sending you the coordinates. Begin the mobilisation now.’
The Imperial advance was rapid. The orks had paved the way, destroying the jungle as they advanced, flattening all obstacles. Adeptus Astartes, Astra Militarum and Mechanicus contingents moved north on the trail the enemy had left. In less than two hours, the smoke of their vehicles was in sight. Even so, Koorland wished for more speed. He had no proof Vulkan was battling the front lines of the greenskin column. And if the primarch was there, how long could the struggle continue?
He forced the questions aside, placing them with his doubts. There was a clear path of action open to him, so he took it. Since the disaster of Ardamantua, he had been faced with one hard decision after another. Each time, the choice had been clear. Each time, the outcome uncertain.
They all still were.
But now there was the immediacy of the mission, and the fury of an assault. And for the first time since Ardamantua, he had the prospect of seeing the orks bleed.
Koorland rode with a squad of the Last Wall in one of the Rhinos the Fists Exemplar had turned over for the company’s use. The transport was in the front line of the advance. He sat in the top hatch, watching the jungle ahead, tracking the progress of the combined effort of the Adeptus Astartes, the Astra Militarum and the Mechanicus. He was closing on the orks with the power to topple worlds.
He kept the assault force in a tight fist. He assumed the orks knew the attack was coming, so planned to render their information useless with a massive, overwhelming blow. The army advanced at the speed of its infantry. Gunships flew overwatch. Tanks held their fire until the last minute. Hemisphere took the Deathblow up again, maintaining a cautious distance until Koorland ordered the attack.
‘What can you see?’ Koorland asked him.
‘The rearguard is still moving forwards. The horde’s direction is unchanged from earlier.’
‘They aren’t turning to fight us?’
‘It seems not. Either they aren’t aware of our approach or they don’t care.’
‘Then it’s time they did.’
Still he waited, until he caught his first sight of the rearmost orks. He could not hear their snarls over the clanking roar of the Imperial transports and tanks, but he saw the ferocity in their movements. They were rushing to fight an enemy thousands of metres ahead of them, ignoring the one approaching from behind.
Koorland switched to the combat network. ‘Now!’ he said.
A new volcano erupted in the Calderan jungle. Its eruption was focused. Its devastation was controlled. It was a thing of metal and ceramite, of promethium and particle beams. It was flesh and machine. It was the fury of the Imperium come to punish the xenos.
The artillery barrage reached ahead of the rearguard. Predators, Whirlwinds, Dunecrawlers, Basilisks and Wyverns fired at once. Beams, mortars, rockets and shells struck the targeted region, and a second Imperial volcano erupted in answer to the first. The middle distance turned into a firestorm that rose to the clouds. Silhouetted fragments of ork bodies and vehicles tumbled through the flames. The thunder of the salvo was like the planet itself cracking in two.
As the tanks and artillery vehicles continued the bombardment, the infantry charged the rear of the ork column. Fists Exemplar and the Last Wall poured out of Rhinos and Land Raiders. Behind them came the skitarii and the Guard. Assault squads rode jump packs ahead of the main charge and came down in the midst of orks, between the walking barrage and the battering ram of the infantry.
I am Slaughter, Koorland thought. His wall-name had been stolen from him by that terrible voice over Ardamantua. Now he reclaimed it. He struck the orks with a wall of battle-brothers and a hurricane wind of mass-reactive shells. He had brought annihilation to the enemy. He had brought vengeance. ‘I am Slaughter!’ he shouted, his bolter on full burst, and he saw a measure of justice for his murdered brothers in the butchery he unleashed.
The Imperial advance was fast, but measured, disciplined. Las, shells, electrical arcs and plasma bolts hit the orks in an unbroken wave. The assault squads spread ripples of ruin and confusion. Hundreds of metres of the enemy column collapsed into anarchy. Wherever the orks turned, they were cut down. They fought back, but there was no coherence to their response. There was order only in the manner of their deaths. The infantry charged in conflicting directions. Trucks and warbikes were caught in the crush, unable to manoeuvre, their wheels spinning over the bodies of the fallen until rockets and grenades turned them into flaming coffins.
Further on, the massive shapes of two vast walkers bulked against the sky, higher than the flames. Gunships attacked them in squadrons. Flying through the anti-aircraft fire, the Imperial flights strafed the walkers with lascannons and heavy bolters. The walkers lumbered to retaliate. They brought their heavy weapons to bear on departing aircraft only to be hit from another flank by the next squadron. As the gunships passed the walkers, they looped back to launch missiles at the ork tanks.
Koorland felt the momentum of the campaign. It was a beast upon the land, tearing into its prey. It was also a mechanism of violence, crushing the enemy with implacable precision. Three branches of the Imperium’s might fought as one, their collective forming the sinews of the beast, the gears of the machine. This was the unity so absent in the Great Chamber. The competing agendas that had led to the madness on Mars were gone. The corrupt self-interest of the High Lords and the divisions they fostered threatened the Imperium as much as the orks. But here, now, the servants of the Emperor did their duty. In this moment, the fall of the greenskins seemed inevitable, no matter how far they evolved or how advanced their technology.